Heads up!

The popular press has been teasing us since the 1940's about cars that will convert to airplanes in a few minutes and allow us to fly over the traffic to work. Somehow the Gee Whiz journalists never seemed to factor into the equation the basic inability of the average person to master the piloting of an automobile even after decades of experience or to visualize the air above our head filled with drunks, text messaging teens, cell phone yakking soccer moms and winged versions of all the road vermin that infest our highways.

They're still at it, in fact. The NASA-funded first annual PAV challenge just wrapped up in Santa Rosa this weekend. PAV or Personal Air Vehicle is a pointless and euphemistic coinage that sounds like it was minted by the same industry bullslingers who gave us SUV, but that's only a small clue as to the silliness of this entire enterprise. According to ZDNet,

"with the right technology, small auto-piloted planes could one day alleviate traffic gridlock by shuttling people around on midrange trips (jaunts of between 100 and 500 miles) with much more speed, economy and efficiency than a car. "Planes for plain folk" is one motto."

God help us all is my version. The idea of producing an intelligent airplane in which Gerry and Mrs. Atricks or their backwards-hatted hardware-faced grandchildren can safely travel a few hundred miles at 150 MPH may appeal to technophiles, but those of us who daily witness the full spectrum of human idiocy on our roads might just prefer to stay in a bunker if this idea takes off. No technology can overcome the massed powers of stupidity, ineptitude, inability to focus or to judge speed and distance.

The dreamers envision an airplane - excuse me, a PAV - so advanced that it can, along with thousands of other PAV's, be trusted to behave like a flock of migratory birds with scant human intervention; miraculously arriving at some pre-programmed destination in all kinds of weather. I can't help but envision a hailstorm of hot metal and burning plastic raining down on our heads along with the cigarette butts and beer cans and McDonald's packaging one finds on every roadside.

Besides, the American public will not buy two seat, sporty vehicles and the manufacturers will quite soon be turning out versions of military heavy transport planes (SUAV's?) so that every wimp, twit and one-eyed psycho can feel powerful flying to work with all 4 engines roaring and 14 Kilowatt "sound system" booming. Spinning hubcaps sold separately.

cross posted at The Reaction

Memento mori

Everyone wants to be remembered. Chufu built his pyramid in Giza and Emperor Qin has his mausoleum surrounded by countless clay soldiers. Bonaparte has his tomb at Les Invalides and most people get at least a memorial marker somewhere, but for those who see nothing new under the sun, a trip to the American South might be a surprise.

At first I thought it was just one of the weird things rednecks do, and then I saw another and another. Billy Bob wants more than marble in the graveyard, he wants something on wheels; something big. Maybe I've just lived too long or maybe one of those alternate universes physicists are talking about is leaking through to this one, but I'm seeing memorial trucks all over these days with "in loving memory of" decals on the massive rear windows.

I wouldn't want any part of such chicken-fried vulgarity for my own part. Of course should someone wish ever so tastefully to inscribe my name on a shiny yellow C6-R and run it at the 24 Heures du Mans, or perhaps on the varnished teak transom of a 300' megayacht, I wouldn't object. Pyramids are passe' don't you know.

Death, how high is thy center of gravity.

Death, it's a good thing. Without it we wouldn't exist and without it, all the evil bastards from time immemorial would still be here, polluting the world. As sad as it is that we have to leave and face oblivion, it's comforting that Jerry Fallwell didn't fare any better for all his pious pretensions.

I have long tried never to gloat over the demise of anyone but being human I feel worse about some than others, like the 19 year old girl who died yesterday near here when she took a corner too fast in her SUV. Doubtless her parents thought they were doing the right thing. I don't know whose corpse it was that I saw on Mother's day, being loaded into an ambulance parked next to the wreckage of another SUV rollover on Florida's turnpike. Evidently it was an overly aggressive lane change.

The local paper says nobody knows why another SUV rolled over the following day on Route 95. No other cars were involved and the driver, being in a coma, can't help us. At least now we don't have to listen to Jerry tell us it was God's wrath against the tolerant and merciful. We only have the advertising industry, pop culture and the gullibility of the motoring public to blame.